"Blast from the Past"

Last night, my wife and I chose to watch a movie that has been a long-time favorite of ours: Brendan Fraser's Blast from the Past. We had seen that movie countless times, and we still find it amusing and funny - and with a good lesson too.

Last night, one particular scene got my attention: it was the scene when Brendan's character Adam Webber steps out into the world for the first time and sees the sky. He stares at the sky and a broad, satisfied and awed smile breaks across his face.

A passer-by approaches him from behind and asks "What are you looking at?"

"The sky", he answers, a bit bewildered that the stranger even asked him that question.

"Where?", the stranger asks.

"Up there" Adam answers.


"I don't see anything", says the stranger as he seemingly struggles to see what Adam sees.

"Just look at it", Adam says.


He then moves on and other passers-by look up to get a glance at what has obviously awed and entranced Adam. A mother and daughter walk by, and as the mother strains to see "the sky", her little daughter smiles and says "I see it!"


When we were young, everything looked so much bigger: the classrooms we sit in, the gym we play in, the roads we ride our bikes on -- why, even the comfort rooms at my grade school and high school Alma Mater used to look so much bigger back then.

Even the "little-over two month vacation period" between March and June seemed to last longer than it really was.

People were friendlier, candy was cheaper and roads were safer. Village streets had kids playing patintero, taguan, habulan, tumbang-preso, touch-ball (actually dodge ball) and every street corner had it's own basketball half-court with a ring and backboard installed on your friendly neighborhood MERALCO street post.

But then we grew older - and friends gave way to corporate enemies and competition, candy was replaced by expensive and little-filling health food, and road-rage became a drivers' best defense against other drivers.

Blast from the Past suddenly meant more than just plain nostalgia to me: it suddenly represented the death of innocence, as many of us have lost the "awe" that Adam Webber had at the sight of something as simple as the sky.

We need more of these.

More "Awwww..." moments; more "Oooohhh" and "Aahhhh" and "Wow" and "Aha!" moments.

I'm not telling you to revert to ignorant innocence (though sometimes ignorance of the worlds' troubles does have its advantages) -- but I AM telling you not to lose the innocence that has inspired us to wake up every morning just to see the sun come up over the horizon; to step out early enough each night to catch a glimpse of and wish upon the first star, and to sit on a corner and watch the clouds change shape from a fluffy rabbit to a running horse (I never did see that horse no matter how hard I looked).

The world is in a bad shape -- some say it's in the worst shape it has ever been.

But all is not lost.

There are still so many glimmers of hope: so many awe-inspiring people and personalities; countless images of beauty amidst the concrete jungle, and still so much unfathomable depths of love and understanding in the hearts of those who have chosen to be inspired and to become inspirations.

"Just look...", and you will see what I am writing about.